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The “Berner Tagewacht” publishes the full text of Karl
Liebknecht’s protest in the Reichstag against the voting of the war
credits. The protest was suppressed in the Reichstag, and no German
paper has published it. It appears that seventeen Social-Democratic
members expressed their opposition to the credits on December 2, but
Karl Liebknecht’s was the only vote recorded against them.
Liebknecht’s protest declares that
“this war, which none of the
peoples involved desired, was not started for the benefit of the German
or of any other people. It is an Imperialist war, a war for capitalist
domination of the world markets and for the political domination of the
important countries in the interest of industrial and financial
capitalism. Arising out of the armament race, it is a preventative war
provoked by the German and Austrian war parties in the obscurity of
semi-absolutism and of secret diplomacy.
“It is also a Buonapartist attempt tending to demoralise and destroy the growing Labour movement.”
“The German word of command ‘against Czarismus,’
like the English or French word of command ‘against militarism,’ has
been the means of bringing forth the most noble instincts, the
revolutionary traditions and hopes of the peoples, for the purpose of
hatred among the peoples. Accomplice of ‘Czarismus,’ Germany, a model
country of political reaction, possesses not the qualities necessary to
play the part of a liberator of peoples ...
“This war is not a defensive war for Germany. Its
historical character and the succeeding events make it impossible for
us to trust a capitalist Government when it declares that it is for the
defence of the country that it asks for the credits.
“A peace made as soon as possible and which will
humiliate no one is what must be demanded. All efforts in that
direction should be supported. A simultaneous and continual demand for
such peace in all the belligerent countries will be able to stop the
bloody massacre before the complete exhaustion of all the peoples
concerned .....”
Liebknecht concludes his protest by declaring that
he will vote in favour of anything that will lighten the hard lot of
“our brothers on the field of battle, and those wounded and sick, for
whom I have the warmest compassion .... But my protest is against the
war, against those responsible for it, against those who are directing
it; against the capitalistic ends for which it is being pursued,
against the violation of the neutrality of Belgium and Luxemburg,
against military dictation, and against the complete neglect of social
and political duties of which the Government and the dominant class are
guilty to-day.”
Courtesy of Marxists Internet Archive
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